


Maybe if you kiss me back...

by Anonymous



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Enemies to Lovers, Kinda, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining, School Plays, Winter Plays, anyway idk what else to tag, one-sided enemies tbh lol, ooooh, why arent these tags already? hmmm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-25 18:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30093036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Felix seemingly hates Changbin for a reason Changbin doesn't know. Due to circumstances, they're forced to play each other's love interest in a winter play and things take off from there.
Relationships: Lee Felix/Seo Changbin
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: Winter Nights & Summer Days: Round One





	Maybe if you kiss me back...

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Changlix Fest prompt #023~ 
> 
> The main theme of this round is winter and/or night and I tried to mention both in this first chapter although I'm afraid it was quite vague :')
> 
> Also, to the prompter: what a lovely prompt you wrote <3 I really hope my fic won't disappoint you even though I didn't quite do the 'enemies to lovers' part justice. Sorry about that, I just couldn't come up with a good reason why both of them would hate each others guts and turn it into a love story by the end :'))
> 
> I have no brain juice left but I had to have a title so there's that~ It's smth completely random tbh :')
> 
> Last but not least, the warning I put is mostly bc of some swear words. Idk how warning work lmao anyway, there's not gonna be any smut in this just a kiss (or two idk we'll see)

Rehearsal starts uneventfully. Once Changbin arrives at the theatre, it’s empty save for Chan, as it often is. The older is sitting on his usual spot all the way to the far right of the room, laptop on his lap and bobbing his head to whatever is coming out of his headphones. They always end up hanging out together before anyone else arrives and Changbin is mindful to make his presence known beforehand so he doesn’t scare Chan again. He descends the dozen or so steps to the front seats, crosses through the empty leg space in front of them, and climbs up the second aisle to Chan’s row.

“Hey, Binnie, what’s up?” Chan greets him with a goofy smile that Changbin can’t help but return.

“Not much,” he replies, shrugging his backpack off and taking a seat next to the older. The laptop screen is taken over by the music software Chan uses to produce his own tracks. “Are you working on anything new?”

Chan eyes the currently black screen, and hums. “Kinda. I’m trying to come up with some beats for a class project but I can’t focus for the life of me.”

“I can help!” Changbin is quick to offer. “When is it due?”

Chan spares him a look, amused. “It’s not due for another two weeks but-“

Their conversation is interrupted by the entrance door’s loud groaning and Mrs. Kang’s voice filtering through the scarcely occupied space right after. She’s not alone -thankfully, she only talks quietly to herself, never loudly- and Changbin doesn’t need to turn around in order to tell who is accompanying the professor. He still does, though. Because, apparently, Changbin is a masochist of some sort.

Felix is gesticulating animatedly to Mrs. Kang as he speaks, his tone lower and his words harder to decipher, partly because his giant, fluffy scarf swallows half his face up. It’s made clear that Felix is talking about something funny when Mrs. Kang lets out her signature chortle and Felix beams at her, obviously satisfied with the reaction he got. Changbin huffs at the exchange, yet his heart stutters at the gleeful look on the younger boy’s face. Felix, Changbin has come to realize, smiles with his whole body; when the reaction is pulled out of him -and that happens often enough- his lips spread out widely, bunching his cheeks up in the process, his eyes turn into moon crescents, and his ears twitch. If he’s sitting, his shoulders will hunch forward a bit, unable to control the sheer happiness Felix is feeling at that moment, while his hands twist or flail about happily. Whereas, if he’s standing up, he will momentarily rock back and forth on his feet, or he might do a little dance if the excitement is too much to handle. Honestly, it’s cute. More than. Changbin wishes he’d one day see such a reaction directed at him instead of simply being a bystander to all of Felix’s lovely smiles.

Changbin is lost in thought, contemplating all the brilliant little details of his favorite Felix trait, when suddenly Mrs. Kang is referring to them and draws him out of his daydream. Felix is left a couple steps behind as the professor hurries to the front of the theatre.

“Good evening, boys,” she greets them, barely sparing them a glance, as she settles her briefcase down on the stage floor, unbuckles it, and begins shuffling through the mass of papers inside.

“Good evening, m’am,” Chan replies cheerfully, while Changbin can only muster the energy to do a half-assed version of it.

From the corner of his eye, Changbin can see Chan shutting his laptop, a cue that he’ll be asked to move soon, so he stands up and starts shuffling out of his seat. It’s just his damned luck that his foot catches on the foot of a seat right as he’s about to step into the aisle. He stumbles, not his worst performance, and thankfully there’s a lot of armrests around him, free to grab and right oneself. He distantly feels Chan’s hand grabbing at his jacket in an effort to save him from landing on his face, but Changbin can't pay too close attention to that because he unthinkingly meets Felix’s eyes across the room. The younger’s eyebrows are pinched together and he looks worried -and, surely, Changbin mustn't have yelped out loud or anything, right?- but it only lasts a moment. Once he realizes it’s Changbin, his worry flies away, and maybe, although Changbin isn't wearing his glasses so he can't be sure, Felix rolls his eyes dismissively, as well.

Case in freaking point.

“What’s his deal?” he murmurs, annoyed. 

“Whose deal?” Chan inquires.

Changbin sighs. He hadn't intended to be heard, but Chan must have been closer to him than he thought. His friend’s eyes are ridiculously earnest as he awaits an answer, and Changbin senses the onset of a petulant mood so he decides to hell with it. It’s been bugging him for so long, ever since Felix joined the Club two months ago, to be exact, that finding the need to vent about it to another human being had simply been a matter of time.

Changbin had been so happy to welcome a new member to the team, especially since their last recruit hadn't exactly been a success story. Felix had been shy in the beginning, merely sharing a frozen smile with everyone present around him, but quickly got to talking and laughing with the rest of the members. Changbin had psyched himself up for fifteen minutes before walking over, awkwardly interrupting Felix and Chan’s conversation, in order to introduce himself. Then, Chan turned towards him, smiled, and dragged him closer by the waist, the best of intentions behind his action. Changbin had gone with it happily, and even spent a moment studying Felix’s expression, amazed at how unbothered the other looked at having been cut off mid-sentence, and then it happened, as if in slow motion; their eyes met and Felix’s expression hardened in a matter of seconds, his smile instantly melting off his face as his lips pressed together in a heart-shattering line. Changbin can recall their first meeting with all its awful details. How Felix had coldly greeted him, saying the bare minimum until Changbin couldn't bare it anymore and left to find different company, preferably the kind that would babble on and on without expecting a reply from him so he could wallow in the misery that the new kid had oh so oddly managed to bring about in him in the span of a few minutes. Luckily for Changbin, about half of the Club consisted of people quite talented in monologues.

Changbin clears his throat, more so to bring himself back to the present than anything else. “Felix,” he replies, and it’s at that moment that his brain comes back online and he realizes that he’s been blocking Chan’s path all this time. He steps aside and lets Chan pass, before following close behind. 

“What about him?” Chan asks, and for a moment, Changbin thinks Chan is just messing with him, but then a weird thought crosses his mind: what if this is all in his head? What if… He shuts himself down before his mental spiral continues.

“He never smiles at me,” he settles for. His tone comes out whinier than he’d like, but it’s out there now and he can't do anything about it.

Changbin hates everything.

Chan pauses on his step, his snort sounding loud and clear, and he turns around with a teasing smirk and a raised eyebrow. “Do you  _ want  _ him to smile at you?”

Oh, Changbin hates Chan. And, more than that, he hates how he can feel his ears burn with how fast he blushes.

“Shut up, I don't,” he deflects dumbly. “It's just weird, isn't it? He smiles at everyone - I’ve seen him smile at a trail of ants he saw on the pavement for fuck’s sake- but never at me!” His voice has grown in volume by the end of his sentence, and he subtly looks around them to check if anyone -if Felix- heard him. Fortunately, Felix is absorbed on his phone all the way across the room and Changbin can breathe again.

He’s poised to resume speaking when Chan cuts him off with a shrug. “Maybe he’s having an off day,” he says, dropping his backpack on a seat some rows below his previous one. It’s closer to the loudspeakers and Chan immediately sets to work, fiddling with some cables while mumbling under his breath about ungrateful asses that can't even coil the cables back up properly once they're done using them. Changbin watches him, somewhat entertained, until Chan manages to untangle the cables, at last. He moves onto his laptop, then, setting the device down on a makeshift desk before plugging in the loudspeaker cord.

Changbin mulls Chan’s words over, but it’s close to impossible. He wants to argue that it's obvious Felix’s off days are oddly particular, occurring three times a week and only in Changbin’s presence, but he doesn’t wanna push it.

There are a couple more students that have arrived in the meantime and Changbin silently moves towards them. Any other day, he’d be scrolling through his phone to kill time but he’s not in the mood today. He chances a look at Felix, or at least at the spot he’d previously seen him sitting at, but doesn’t find him there. Instead, the younger has moved to the short steps at the side of the stage, and is currently huddled close to Yeri, the duo whispering up a storm between them and sharing giggles. Changbin’s heart drops to his stomach and in that moment, he truly feels for poor deers caught in unforgiving headlights; he can’t take his eyes away. Felix hands his smiles out so easily, careless to the effect of their existence. Or the lack thereof.

Changbin ends up pulling his phone out anyway, but he doesn’t even have time to go through one tweet on his timeline before Mrs. Kang is calling for everybody to listen.

“We’ll be going over the Weston Ball scenes again today,” she announces, and in reply, there are scattered hums of agreement that come from all around the room. She abruptly twirls around, then, zeroing in on Felix and Yeri on the stairs. “I trust that you’ve practiced your dancing, you two,” she continues, pointing at them with her script folder. She doesn’t wait for an answer. “And since you’re almost on stage already, we might as well kick off rehearsal with it.”

Changbin involuntarily snorts and tries to hide the sound with a short cough. Main lead material, right there. Which brings up a sore spot, if Changbin is to be honest, because he almost had the main role for this play. He  _ would _ have it, if it hadn’t been for Felix suddenly joining the Club just in time to audition for the part. He’s not even mad about it anymore, if he ever truly were in the first place. Felix is good at acting, and he deserved the role, even though that meant Changbin had to play Frank Churchill instead. Frank’s character arc is great - he shouldn’t complain, he admonishes himself.

Mrs. Kang signals Chan, who clicks away at his laptop until the instrumentals fill the room. The dance routines have been a pain in the ass to memorize, but they’re integral to the play, so elegant and ethereal as they are, and they couldn’t just write them off. The barely there touches, the soft, calculated steps, and the endless spins and twirls, somehow make it all the more harder to execute.

It’s during such a twirl, Yeri’s hand softly cupped in Felix’s own as they dance around the stage, the thuds of their feet on the floor rhythmical, and their movement across the wooden panels hypnotizing, that everything seems to come to a sudden stop.

Changbin’s gaze is glued on Felix, taking in all the changes the different light angles bring to his features, so he understandably doesn’t realize something has gone terribly bad until Yeri’s shrill cry breaks through the air and makes him flinch. His eyes fly towards her. She’s hanging tightly by Felix’s shoulders, her face shoved against his chest, and her whole form is trembling, either from sobbing or the pain or a combination. She’s favoring her left foot, sort of letting it hover mid-air, a few inches over the floor, uselessly. Everyone’s frozen in place -Felix, too- except for Mrs. Kang, who runs onto the stage and reaches for Yeri. Felix must be moving on auto-pilot as he helps Mrs. Kang lower Yeri to the floor, because Changbin looks at him right after and Felix looks shaken, completely lost and spacing out. He’s no help when Mrs. Kang asks for somebody to please call an ambulance immediately and Changbin sympathizes. He wants to help; help Yeri or Mrs. Kang, or Felix. He dares do none of that, afraid he’d be a burden in such a time.

Changbin isn’t sure who ends up calling for an ambulance, he just knows that the paramedics arrive after a while with a stretcher in tow, and Yeri lays on top of it, and then they’re off to the hospital. The buzz around him comes down to a simmer, and suddenly Chan is next to him, informing him that, apparently, tonight’s rehearsal is cancelled and to be rescheduled. Changbin nods and gathers his stuff.

**Author's Note:**

> To everyone reading this, I hope you enjoyed~ <3 
> 
> It's way too late and I barely managed to post this as a chaptered work on time but hey~ This is the first prompted work I actually (semi) deliver so yaay!! Also, I know I say this every time but I'll really truly try to post the next chapter to this soon! I just lack time (and general life) management skills, bear with me TT
> 
> Also, the winter play they're doing is basically Emma by Jane Austen lol I started brainstorming on the fic after I'd watched the movie one night so this happened~ It doesn't rlly matter tbh since I know nothing about theatre and the plot won't rlly rely heavily on the play - it's just a piece of trivia ^^"
> 
> Not beta-read. I'll probs come back tomorrow or smth to fix mistakes etc..


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